


tried

by celosiaa



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jon has POTS, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Has EDS | Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27126496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celosiaa/pseuds/celosiaa
Summary: Jon has a terrible mix of the flu and a POTS flareup, and decides to go into work all the same.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Comments: 26
Kudos: 230





	tried

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taylor_tut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/gifts).



> POTS = postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome! It can get worse with illness and so I wrote this for my good good buddy Taylor <3

_This was a mistake._

Jon knows it, his body knows it—the entire train car probably knows it too. It’s barely a ten minute’s ride from his flat to the Institute, but it might as well have been an hour trapped in a boiler room for all he can tell. _Suffocating, you’re suffocating_ —is the only message his brain will send him, as he sits squeezed in between two very unfortunate passengers on this snowy Monday morning, trying very hard both not to cough and to stop himself from tearing off his coat and scarf this instant.

Being ill always hits him hard—far harder than it has any right to; harder than he is willing to acknowledge, really—as it always seems to trigger his POTS in the most frustrating of ways. Last time he’d been ill, truly ill, Tim may have paid the price for his stubbornness more than he had himself. What with him refusing to do anything to look after himself, being caught by surprise by a fainting spell, and ending up dragging Tim to the A&E with him to be treated for a nasty head wound. This time around, he has actually taken several precautions, with his compression stockings on, a water bottle, and TENS unit in his bag, just in case the muscle aches from whatever hell bug he’s managed to catch compound the pain from his EDS.

_Tim ought to be proud._

Mouth twisting in a smile in spite of himself, Jon resists the urge to bolt out of the train car as soon as the stop is announced, forcing himself instead to stand slowly and carefully before exiting.

—

As luck would have it, the lift had been broken down, forcing Jon to climb the flight of stairs up to the street. Legs nearly giving out on him before he could half-sit, mostly collapse onto the bench at the top, his chest heaves as he tries to convince his body not to faint. With somewhat limited success.

So long as the fading in and out of his vision is not followed by a lapse in awareness, he’ll be alright.

_Suffocating suffocating_

Whether rational or not, Jon has to pull of his coat and scarf _right now_ , or he’s sure his brain will short out on him completely. He tears at it all as quickly as possible, fingers shaking over the large buttons of his peacoat. Anything to relieve the pressure on his chest, whether brought on by POTS or his congestion, he’s soon to find out. Preferably, he’d like to slow down his breathing a bit before coughing again, but there’s very little he can do to control that—and buries it all in the folds of his scarf, hoping to avoid as many stares from passers-by as possible.

The lightheadedness only bangs against his eyes again as the fit continues, forcing him to fold his legs beneath himself and bend forward in an effort to _breathe, breathe._ Surely it hadn’t been so bad this morning when he had stepped out of the door—he had been quite certain of his ability to control it enough to get by, and hopefully without raising the alarm about his health throughout the archives. By the sound of it, though, he just hadn’t been getting deep enough breaths to force it all out, as the crackling depth of it alarms even him.

All the same, after a few minutes of breathing deeply with marginally-clearer lungs, he feels finally able to look up again—even shuddering against the soft padding of snowflakes against his shoulders and greying hair, rather than panicking about being boiled alive by his own jacket.

He’ll take what improvement he can get.

Steeling himself to walk the block down to the Institute, Jon pulls up his compression stockings from where they had slipped a bit and pushes on.

—

“So I’m sitting there, right? I’m sitting there, barbecue sauce on my titties…”

“ _You were NOT!_ ” Sasha bellows at Tim, struggling to raise her voice over the sound of Martin’s cackling. “Don’t encourage him, Martin, he _always_ puts this in his fucking stories.”

“HEY! It’s _true_!! It could have happened more than once, you know.”

“ _God_ I hate you so much,” she shouts, sending both Martin and Tim for another round of uncontrollable laughter.

It’s the perfect opportunity for Jon—who exits the lift as quickly as he can, heading for his office with the all the single-mindedness of a particularly winded and dizzy man. Perfect, because no one saw him beyond a shadow darkening the doorstep. No one to raise the alarm as he sinks into his chair, trembling at the exertion of making the journey from the lobby to the basement.

Burying his face in his hands, he sniffs back against the congestion plaguing him, adjusts his position to take pressure off his throbbing legs, and tries to collect his scattered thoughts enough to get to work.

—

_Spinning, spinning, spinning_ are the walls of his office around him, worsening with every cough he stifles into the sleeves of his cardigan. After the initial recovery period when he had finally been able to sit in his office, chest aching with exertion, he had truly felt alright for those first couple of hours—even finding himself able to get lost in statements for a while, barely noticing an hour tick by, two, three. Until his vision started to go out again, and he found himself leaning aching elbows on aching knees, feeling the nausea that had caused him to lose his breakfast that morning rise up again in his throat.

_Please, not now. Please._

He’s got to get something in him, knows it would help to at least keep something with salt down, if he can manage it. Regretfully, the only way to stop the dizziness is sure to worsen it first—as his emergency Gatorade supply happens to be in the break room refrigerator.

_Text Tim,_ the rational part of his mind supplies at once, the sound advice on it falling on entirely deaf ears.

_Can manage this myself._

_I put it there, I can go get it._

Wishing more than anything he had brought his walker, he moves slowly, ever so slow and careful to standing—and stars explode in his vision at once, driving him right back down to the chair again, head between his knees and panting.

_Damn it damn it damn it_

_Calm, just—_

_Calm down._

Heart pounding in double time to the ticking of the clock on the wall, Jon does everything he can to slow it down, slow it down, ease the stabbing pain of his overworked heart in his chest with the deepest breaths he can manage. It’s not enough, can’t see, can’t breathe—

_No no no—_

—

_Thud._

The sound drives Tim into Jon’s office at once, not for the first time—though never with any less worry or concern. Even knowing what happened, that Jon was almost certainly fine, would never truly take away the way his stomach clenches every time this happens, every time he sees Jon hit the ground, even if he’s able to catch him on the way. And today was especially worrying, with the damp coughing he had heard slipping beneath the office door since this morning.

_Please be okay please be okay—_

“Jon?” he calls gently, swinging the door open to find him on the ground, rolling onto his back with a groan. “Did you faint?”

“I—yeah,” he replies, more vague-sounding than Tim would like, rubbing the back of his head as he starts to sit up.

_Not good._

“You hit your head?” Tim asks as he kneels next to him, already reaching forward to card through Jon’s hair, looking for any sign of swelling or bleeding.

“I don’t—not badly, if I— _oh_ ,” he trails off at once, eyes beginning to flutter.

“Alright, easy, now,” Tim mutters, supporting Jon’s head as he shifts back to lying flat again, eyes clenched again the returning dizziness. “It’s really bad today, huh? And you’re ill too.”

In response, all Jon will give is a sigh, draping an arm over his mouth as it turns into a cough, before placing it over his eyes. Something twinges in Tim’s chest at the sight—knowing how much Jon hates this, hates anyone fussing over him even more—and squeezes gently above his knee in acknowledgement.

“What can I do? Anything?”

Still nothing verbal from him for a few seconds—seconds Tim is willing to wait as Jon sorts through both his own unwillingness to ask for help, as well as through his own likely-scattered thoughts. It had taken a _lot_ for Jon to tell him about his POTS in the first place—in fact, that trust had not been built until Tim had to take him to A&E after a particularly bad fall. Now that he thinks of it, Jon had been ill then too—and even grouchier than his current persona of “Boss-man.”

“Was trying to— _ugh_ ,” starts, cutting off for a moment to clutch at his stomach, against what is most likely rising nausea. “Was trying to get—get some Gatorade.”

“That’s what all this is about? Getting your nasty-ass purple Gatorade?”

When Jon huffs out a little laugh with a smile, Tim feels very much pumping his fist in the air for joy—but refrains, if only for Jon’s sake.

“Tastes good. Don’t know what you’re missing.”

_And a joke?_

_Should I call an ambulance?_

“Tastes like _purple_ ,” Tim replies, letting a smile filter heavily into his own expression now. “I don’t mess with shit that tastes like a _color.”_

A sharp gasp from behind alerts him to Martin’s presence in the doorway.

“Oh Jon, what happened? Are you alright?” he asks, with such deep concern that Jon immediately buries his face in his hands and groans.

“Just fainted, is all,” Tim says at once, waving a sharp hand by his throat to cut off his well-meaning sympathy.

“Right,” he replies with raised eyebrows, carefully schooling his expression in a way that Tim very much appreciates. “Right. Anything I can do?”

“Could grab him some Gatorade from the fridge, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“On it,” he nods at once, and sets off.

Just then, Jon starts up coughing again, so harsh and damp it sets Tim’s teeth on edge.

“That sounds rough, Jon,” he grimaces, reaching up to his desk to grab tissues from atop it and set them on the floor.

“It’s—fine,” comes the reply, of course, accented in between by a hitching at the back of his throat that drives him upwards to sitting.

“Right. Sure,” Tim mutters, rolling his eyes as he braces Jon, whose harsh coughing bends him double with effort.

When he begins to sway a bit, eyes fluttering again—Tim is already to prepared to push his head gently forward and between his knees.

“Easy, easy.”

_“Fuck.”_

“I’ve got you.”

The shaking beneath Tim’s hands is not altogether a rarity after a bad faint, but something tells him there might be another cause this time. A fever, namely.

“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?” he asks, after waiting for Jon’s breathing to come a bit back under control.

“Didn’t— _don’t_. Don’t feel well,” he whispers, bending even further forward, enough to have Tim reaching for the bin, just in case.

“Alright, that’s alright,” he whispers in response, feeling powerless to do anything but sit and rub his back.

“Tried,” he starts up again after a moment, altogether shocking an unsuspecting Tim with his verbosity.

“Tried? Tried what?”

“Tried to be careful,” he clarifies, coughing once more into his elbow, and letting it double him back down. “Promise, I— _heh_ —tried. Thought I was fine.”

“I know, Jon,” Tim assures at once, rubbing at his back once again against the trembling, wishing it was doing anything to really help him. “I know, alright? Just save your breath. It’s not your fault.”

Thankfully, by the time Martin reappears with the Gatorade, he’s quite a bit steadier, after the coughing fit has reached it’s end. Much to Tim’s surprise, he even offers Martin a small smile as he cast a long shadow through the office, blocking out the fluorescent light of the hall behind him.

“Alright, time for electrolytes!” Tim cheers, as Martin opens the lid to the bottle before handing it to Jon, who begins sipping at it cautiously.

“You’re shaking—are you cold?” Martin asks, already removing his cardigan and kneeling to place it over Jon’s trembling shoulders.

“No,” he snaps sharply, pushing off the cardigan and shifting around, preparing himself to stand. “I’m alright, just—”

“Hang on, hang on,” Tim soothes, pressing back against Jon’s chest as gently as possible to stop his movement. “Just—hold on a second, alright? Let me get the cot set up in here before you try that.”

“Tim—”

“I know, I know, perish the thought. I get it.”

“You _don’t_ —”

“BUT! But,” he cuts in loudly, holding up a hand to shush him. “You shouldn’t even be here, Jon. You’ve probably got the flu, or something, judging by whatever—whatever is _clearly_ going on here. So please. Just have a lie down for, like, an _hour_. That’s all I’m asking.”

_All I’m brave enough to ask, really._

Another pause, during which it’s Tim’s turn for his heart to pound, watching Jon try to formulate an argument against him with furrowed brows.

And then—everything that had been hunched and furrowed goes slack, as Jon starts to sway dizzily again.

“Oh—oh, Jon,” Martin gasps nervously, helping him slowly lower back to lying on the ground.

“M’fine, fine,” he assures, words slurring a bit as Martin checks his forehead for fever—and if the meaningful glance he gives Tim is anything to go by, he can be pretty certain of Martin’s findings.

“Right. Cot. I’m going to get it, and I’ll be back,” he says firmly, glancing back one more time to find Martin carefully placing his cardigan beneath Jon’s head.

Of course, Tim knows there is still a good deal of fighting to do on the “force Jonathan Sims to take care of himself” front, but this will do.

This will have to do for now.


End file.
